It's enough to give a science fiction nerd like me whiplash: People have been clamoring for smartwatches since Dick Tracy made his first call on a radio wristwatch in 1946, while classic novels like "Neuromancer" and TV shows like "Star Trek: The Next Generation" have been romanticizing virtual reality for decades. Thanks to advances in AI, processor speeds, broadband internet, and screen technology, it's all coming true.

Technology vs. Society

While Facebook talks a big game about using virtual reality to connect people, actually using the tech is still a very solitary pursuit. You put on a headset and tune the world out. For gamers and other VR enthusiasts, that might actually be a selling point, but it's isolating and alienating for a lot of people, especially if they have any kind of family life.

And while smartwatches theoretically untether you from your phone, it means that a lot of people are looking at their wrists a whole lot more. For centuries, now, looking at your watch has been the universal symbol for "I have somewhere else to be."

The Facebook Oculus Rift VR headset
Facebook/Oculus VR

In its own way, this is the genius of the Amazon Echo. Sure, Apple's Siri may have all but invented the market for digital voice assistants. But Amazon's inspired move was to anchor its Alexa to something in your own home, where nobody would judge you for dictating orders to a robot from across the room.

How that plays out in society is still up in the air: Just here at Business Insider, one of my colleagues refused to talk to another until he took the AirPods out of his ears. Similarly, wearing Beats Solo3 headphones for review purposes during a recent trip to Las Vegas made me acutely aware at all times how few people wear headphones on the casino floor.
The Doppler Labs Here One headphones are designed to be a first-wave "hearable" computer.
Business Insider/Jeff Dunn

The underlying problem isn't the technology. It's not exactly easy to build a smartwatch or a virtual reality headset, but there are lots of smart technical people hard at work on improving the underlying technologies every single day. There's no doubt that virtual reality and wearable devices will get better, day after day and month after month. Performance of VR headsets will improve and the price will go down. That much you can bet on.

The question is, even with the marketing might of Facebook, Google, Apple, and all the other Silicon Valley power players, can all of this cutting-edge tech overcome our natural habits? And can they do it before the next next big thing comes around, whatever that is?